


Road to Home

by explosionshark



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Chloe, are you alright?” she asks, real concern softening her voice. “Not that I don’t love seeing you, but this is a little unusual, you have to admit.”</p><p>Joyce has got her there. This is only the third time she’s been back in Arcadia since she and Max left years ago. She never really misses it, which she thinks might be weird, but honestly she’s had enough of this place to last a lifetime.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m fine,” Chloe sighs. “Just… a little lost. Max is out of town, work fell through this week, I’m kind of, uh, adrift at the moment.”</p><p>-</p><p>Max leaves on a 10-day trip to New York City. Chloe tries to handle the situation like an adult. It goes poorly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road to Home

**Author's Note:**

> SHARK WEEK DAY 5. LAST ENTRY. [Hannah](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaMarina/pseuds/OpheliaMarina) sent "important" and [Steph](http://garrianvakarian.tumblr.com/) sent "come back." [Michelle](http://thegadgetfish.tumblr.com) and [Jer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiprej/pseuds/Eiprej) beta'd.
> 
> Title from the Girl in a Coma song.

Chloe wakes up early on the day of Max’s flight so she can make them breakfast one last time. It’s rough; she’s not a morning person on her best days, let alone when she’s melancholy at the thought of being alone for ten days and exhausted from the truly olympic levels of athleticism she’d brought to her sex game last night. Real gold medal shit. Against the wall is actually harder than it looks in porn. Like, Max is tiny but that was _all_ of her body weight and Chloe’s back is still sore. Next time she’ll stretch better beforehand. Limber up.

So maybe she cries a little when she’s stirring chocolate chips into Max’s favorite pancake batter. So what? Max is in the shower when it happens, and by the time she comes out she can barely tell. When Max asks why her eyes are red, she lies about getting orange juice in them and even gets a kiss for her trouble.

The rest of the morning goes relatively smooth. Max is jittery, nervous but excited, bouncing around the apartment. She checks and double checks her flight info, calls up her boss to go over the details of the trip for the billionth time, and recites some seriously over-complicated plant care instructions off index cards she then clips to the magnet on the fridge with a stern warning.

Max holds her hand the entire drive to the airport, and Chloe doesn’t even let go to make obscene gestures at other motorists even though they drive like _total jackasses_. Chloe pulls up at the curb to let Max out, dashing around the truck to unload Max’s suitcase and set it up on the sidewalk for her. They kiss and hug and Max gets a little misty-eyed and promises to call as soon as she lands. Chloe sends her off with a grin and a smack on the ass and successfully represses another crying jag until well after Max has disappeared into PDX.

Chloe pulls into a Starbucks parking lot and listens to Black Flag until she feels manly again, and then she grabs a coffee and gets back on the road because she failed to work crying breaks into her schedule this morning and she’s for sure gonna be late for her first appointment.

This is the first time since she and Max were reunited four years ago that they’re going to be apart. Chloe has planned appropriately, as best as she can, lining up the biggest welding gig she’s ever been offered for this week to keep her busy.

Chloe arrives 20 minutes late but freshly caffeinated. She apologizes professionally, unloads her gear and spends the next 7 hours repairing truly mangled ironwork around a rundown warehouse some savvy, bearded Portlander is trying to turn into a concert venue.

She’s sweaty and exhausted and gross by the time she finishes for the day, but she lets her client talk her into a beer at the bar down the street. “A beer” turns into four or five and she’s thinking about leaving when Max calls. Chloe steps outside and smokes her vape and listens to Max babble about how excited she is and how beautiful the city looks at night. It’s later there and Max is tired from flying, their conversation ends after ten short minutes with Max’s promise to call her again tomorrow. Chloe heads back inside and orders a couple whiskeys and that’s where the night starts to get hazy.

By the time the taxi drops her off at home an hour and a half later her body is leaden and her head is fuzzy with alcohol. She collapses, fully clothed, into the bed and sleeps like the dead.

-

The next morning is predictably rough. She hasn’t been this hungover in ages, the shrill ringing of her alarm cutting into her head like a buzzsaw. She feels queasy and crusty and utterly disgusting. The first thing she does after determining she would not, in fact, vomit her guts out and die, is pop a couple aspirin and drag her sorry ass into the shower. She fucking _reeks_.

Chloe feels a bit better after getting clean, something human-ish, at least. She dresses herself and checks the clock, this time she’s on schedule to show up to the job on time. She has a missing call from Max and calls her back, leaving the phone faceup on the kitchen counter to talk to Max while she makes herself toast.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Max greets oblivious and cheery. “Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” Chloe assures her. She keeps her back to the phone and it’s almost like any other morning, with Max right beside her. “I was just in the shower.”

“Oh. How did the job go yesterday?”

“Pretty good,” Chloe answers carefully, slathering a piece of toast with a healthy amount of apple butter out of habit. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Chloe winces, staring forlornly down at her toast. She hates apple butter, but she buys it for Max. Chloe has always been the only competent cook between them and Max’s gruelling university course load meant Max needs as much sleep as possible, so Chloe’s used to waking up and preparing breakfast for both of them. And she always feeds Max first.

“Stubbed my toe,” Chloe lies, resentfully biting into the offensive piece of toast. No use in wasting perfectly good food.

“Klutz,” Max accuses and oh that was rich coming from her.

The conversation turns to Max and her trip.

It’s the summer before her final year at PNCA and she’s taken a summer internship with one of her professors, Jane Harper. Harper herself is a successful professional photographer, someone an art nerd like Max could really get worked up over, and Max had been thrilled at the opportunity to accompany her on the trip to New York. A friend of Harper’s was holding an exhibition and they had even extended the offer to let Max exhibit some of her own work on Harper’s recommendation as a “rising star.”

Chloe knows this is huge for Max, that it could be a breakthrough moment in her career, but she can’t help but feel kind of queasy at the thought of Max in the big city, surrounded by all those art-holes and swept up in the lights and the glamour.

Sure, Portland was full of hipster artist douchebags, but New York City was like the _mecca_ of hipster artist douchebags. What if they were assholes and Max had to deal with them all on her own? What if she had a terrible time and was stuck out there for ten whole days?

(Or what if it was everything she ever wanted and she realized ten days wasn’t nearly enough?)

Max talks about her hotel and her plans for sight-seeing later and about all the schmoozing she’d done at brunch today (since when did Max eat _brunch_ anyway?) and then excuses herself because she’s got an appointment to go scope out the gallery space in an hour and she needs to find out which trains to take.

Chloe finishes her toast and calls another taxi to get back to the job site, since she’d left her truck there overnight.

She arrives twenty minutes early to find her client standing outside, looking hungover and anxious.

“Hey, got some bad news,” he says, not wasting time with any greetings. “So, someone fucked up. My idiot brother-in-law… look, we’re gonna have to postpone the job, turns out we don’t have all the right permits.”

“what?” Chloe asks, still too tired and hungover to process the news.

“I still want to retain your services,” he assures her, thrusting his hands out in a manner he probably assumes is placating but really just looks slightly unhinged. He scrubs his hand through his beard in distress. “You did good work yesterday. But, we’ll need to push it back a little, that’s all.”

“How long?” Chloe asks.

“A week,” he says.

“A week?”

“Or two.”

_“Two weeks?!”_

“Bureaucracy,” he shrugs as if that explains everything and then lets her into the building to retrieve her gear. He offers to take her up the street for another round of drinks, but honestly shoving her hand into a kitchen sink garbage disposal is more appealing at this point so she declines. Politely. Gotta work that built-up business acumen shit.

Chloe stops at her storage unit on the way home and stows her welding gear. Her plans are shot to shit. On the way home she spots one of those pretentious gourmet donut places and pulls over on a whim, deciding to cheer herself up with some artery-clogging comfort food.

There are not one, not two, but _three_ varieties of donuts with bacon toppings. And besides those there are dozens of other insane looking donuts. There are donuts covered in candy, donuts covered in cereal, donuts filled with _other donuts_

By the time the line moves up enough for Chloe to order, she’s dizzy with options. She hesitates at the counter, probably making the people stuck behind her seethe in pure hatred at her indecision. “I’ll take… two of the-”

Wait.

Wait a goddamn minute.

Max was the one who would call a single woman eating her way through an entire bakery’s worth of donuts a “disgusting perversion of mankind’s right to self determination.”

But Max was in New York eating _brunch_ with a bunch of pretentious dickbags.

“I am the master of my fate,” Chloe whispers. “I am the captain of my soul.”

“Ma’am?” asks the clerk behind the counter, looking legitimately concerned. “Are you okay?”

“More than okay,” Chloe nods. “I’m _free_. Give me one of everything.”

‘One of everything’ turns out to be roughly the equivalent cost of a smallish plasma tv, so Chloe reduces her order to a dozen of the shop’s greatest hits.

When she makes it home, Chloe immediately strips out of her clothes (take that, Max’s ‘no nude lounging on the couch’ rule) and turns on the stereo, blasting ska, and tearing into the box of donuts with reckless abandon.

“No gods, no masters,” Chloe crows through a mouthful of fried dough and Captain Crunch pieces to the empty apartment and Max’s houseplant.

The naked skanking and donut eating party kind of self-perpetuates for a while, Chloe’s sugar rush fueling her very efficiently. Eventually, sweaty and full of donuts, she collapses onto the couch, ignoring the tiny Max voice in her head protesting ‘but Chloe, we have _guests_ sit there,’ and tries settling into a nap. It doesn’t come easy, not with all of those donuts rushing through her veins, so she lights a bowl and queues up an old season of South Park and gets down to business. Max hates South Park and, okay, after a few minutes Chloe can maybe kinda see why but then she’s pretty high and it’s fucking amazing.

Towelie.

A fucking _towel_ that smokes weed, this show is a goddamn masterpiece.

She’s still kind of baked when Max calls, but she thinks she hides it pretty well. She only zones out of the conversation a few times, but her recovery is seamless. Max tells her about all the people she met, and she texts her some photos she’d taken around the city. Chloe tells Max her day was very productive (which it was, if measured on a scale of donuts) and promises to call her when she wakes up in the morning.

For dinner she reluctantly clothes herself again and heads out. She picks up a pizza with everything (and extra pineapples, just for the thrill) and it’s so cathartic because finally, _finally_ she can free her tastebuds from the bonds of Max’s weakass bland palete. She also stops at the liquor store for a 24 pack of beer and a pack of _real_ cigarettes.

While the cat is away…

Chloe discovers trying to eat pizza and smoke cigarettes and drink beer all at once is a little beyond her skill level and also kind of _seriously disgusting_ but it’s still exhilarating.

It feels so wrong.

It feels so right.

“I feel so alive right now,” Chloe whispers to Lisa 2, whom she had dutifully watered after setting her on the coffee table to partake in Chloe’s Star Wars marathon.

She could finally enjoy the prequels without hearing Max’s complaints about the green screen, and the _plot_ , and the _characters_.

Okay, were they a ruthless bastardization of the original film’s vision and clearly a soulless corporate money grab? Yeah, sure. But _Darth fucking Maul_. That double-lightsaber was _tight_.

Chloe passes out on the couch, full of pizza and beer, while on screen Obi Wan and Darth Maul battled to the death on Naboo.

\---

Third day of No Max is not so great. Chloe’s not super hung over this time, at least, but she is a little queasy from all the donuts and pizza. Chloe decides to take a bath this morning, since she has time, and tosses one of Max’s girly fucking bath bombs into the water on a whim. It’s shocking and _delightful_ and Chloe is able to enjoy it without compromising her Cool Punk Aesthetic, witness free.

There are a few donuts left from yesterday, but the thought of eating another one kind of turns Chloe’s stomach at this point. She considers skipping breakfast entirely, but after cutting loose yesterday guilt is starting to creep back in. She always makes it such a huge priority to make sure Max gets three squares a day, if she didn’t take her own advice, that’d be kind of fucked up, right? She settles on a piece of avocado toast and a glass of OJ.

After breakfast Chloe calls Max up and tells her that the gig fell through.

“Aw,” Max whines sympathetically. “I know that totally tanked your plans. What are you going to do the rest of the week?”

“I’ll see if I can set something else up,” Chloe says, phone between her ear and her shoulder, half-heartedly scrolling through Craigslist ads. She changes the subject, not wanting to dwell on her setbacks in the face of Max’s success. “So, how’s it going over there?”

“Chloe, it’s amazing,” Max gushes, breathlessly. Chloe closes her eyes, imagines Max’s blue eyes shining, all blissed out on her art high.

“That’s great, Max,” Chloe smiles, feeling guilty and empty inside. She’s glad Max is having a great time, she really is. She just kind of wishes that maybe she wasn’t having _such_ a great time, and that’s kind of fucked up, right?

“I miss you,” Max sighs.

“Miss you too,” Chloe says, feeling pressure building behind her eyes. She chews on the inside of her cheek and shakes her head. “Call you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” Max agrees and they hang up.

None of the jobs she can find online look particularly promising. Chloe calls a few numbers, the ones that answer are farther out than she wants to go, or seriously low balling her and she doesn’t have the energy to haggle so she passes on them all.

She settles onto the couch for another Star Wars film, but 40 minutes in she’s too restless to continue.

So, she’s not working, that doesn’t mean she has to be totally useless, right?

Yesterday was fun, but the apartment’s a little thrashed. She decides to straighten things up a little.

Tidying up only takes an hour and a half and she’s kind of on a roll, so Chloe decides to just take it all the way and clean the entire house. She gets rid of all the weird shit they’ve collected in the fridge, clears the shit she’s sure no one will admit to buying from the pantry and sets it aside for a run to the foodbank later, and disinfects the countertops. She scrubs the stovetop and the oven, mops the floor and washes the dishes. When the dishes are clean, she washes the sink.

Chloe vacuums everything. _Everything_. She even moves the furniture.

Max, knowing she’s not at A Job, texts her more often today. Cute stories and pictures of the city, selfies with a bunch of cool looking artist types. Chloe responds eagerly, texting back embarrassingly fast each time, well past the point of caring if she seems pathetic or not.

The house is spotless now. Immaculate. Max is gonna be blown away when she comes home to this.

It looks so empty though.

Chloe cooks dinner at home tonight. She eats in front of the TV. She used the same recipe as always, but tonight it just seems so bland, she eats half of her meal and wraps the rest of saran wrap and sets it on the bottom shelf of the newly cleaned fridge.

\---

The morning of the fourth day Chloe is willing to admit she has no fucking clue what she’s doing.

She sleeps in as late as she can, texting Max lazily in bed for nearly an hour before hauling herself up and into a shower. She can’t bring herself to cook anything complicated, feeling low and inexplicably exhausted. She pours a bowl of cereal and eats it petulantly, as if it were a punishment. After her meal, Chloe putters around the apartment, trying to find something to occupy herself with.

Everything is… so _clean._ So, that’s out.

She gets around to finally installing those new eco-friendly lightbulbs Max bought last Christmas. She fixes the wobbly desk in Max’s office that’s been bugging her forever. She reorganizes their closet. Even all of that only kills three hours and when she’s finally done, Chloe feels ready to scream from boredom and frustration.

Frantically refreshing her email in a fit of desperation, praying for something interesting Chloe sees a new message. It’s alarmingly clear that either her mother’s old email account has been hacked or that the Arcadia Bay economy has sunk even further into tragic recession when the subject line offers her “torpedo sized ddickks.”

“Huh,” Chloe nods pensively. “I should go see Joyce.”

The drive to Arcadia Bay is just under 2 hours, which puts her at Two Whales about an hour after the lunch rush. The restaurant is pretty empty, aside from the perennial row of sour looking truckers perched at the counter.

“Chloe!” Joyce exclaims, looking concerned. She digs her phone out of the pocket of her apron, checking for missed calls. “Did something happen?”

“What? No,” Chloe smiles winningly. “Can't a girl just swing by home every now and then to visit her mom?”

“Oh god,” Joyce breathes, she rushes Chloe to a booth and presses the back of her hand into Chloe’s forehead tenderly. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Chloe grumbles, swatting her hands away. “But I’m starved.”

She hasn’t eaten since cereal this morning, and now it’s nearly 3:00.

“What can I get you?” Joyce asks, flipping her notepad open, slipping back into casual professionalism with unconscious ease.

“Waffles,” Chloe says, eyeing the menu.

“Okay.”

“And hash browns,” she adds.

“Alri--”

“Bacon.”

Joyce’s brow furrows, but she keeps writing dutifully. “And what for a--?”

“Can you put the bacon _inside_ the waffles?” Chloe asks thoughtfully.

“No.”

“Look, just make it a double order, then.”

“It’s a shame,” Joyce sighs.

“What’s a shame?” Chloe asks absently, still pursuing the menu. Disco fries…

“That you and Max haven’t tied the knot yet.”

“Yeah,” Chloe says. “Wait, _what_?”

“You should at least have the decency to make an honest woman out of her before you go and leave her a widow,” Joyce said pointedly. “I am not serving you those fries on top of the rest of this, Chloe.”

_How did she know…?_

“Fine,” Chloe relents, folding her arms across her chest petulantly. “Cup of coffee, then.”

“Decaf,” Joyce says.

“No-”

“ _Decaf_ ,” Joyce repeats with a glare. “I’ll have this out for you in two shakes.”

The meal brought before Chloe is admittedly more massive than she had anticipated. She dubs it Breakfast Mountain and snaps a quick pic of it to send to Max before she digs in. Max’s horrified response comes less than a minute later, just two words: _Chloe. No._

 _Chloe YES_ , she texts back, with her non-greasy hand.

Chloe’s sloppily assembled Waffle-Bacon sandwich is as delicious and regrettable as she knew it would be but its syrupy comfort doesn’t last long. Chloe finds herself lingering in the booth well over an hour after her meal is finished. Eventually Joyce slides up to the table.

“What on earth happened to your shirt?” Joyce asks, reaching across the table to tug at the frayed fabric on Chloe’s shoulder.

“Cut off the sleeves,” she shrugged.

“ _Why_?”

“You know Max is, like, 90% of my impulse control.”

“Chloe, are you alright?” she asks, real concern softening her voice. “Not that I don’t love seeing you, but this is a little unusual, you have to admit.”

Joyce has got her there. This is only the third time she’s been back in Arcadia since she and Max left years ago. She never really misses it, which she thinks might be weird, but honestly she’s had enough of this place to last a lifetime.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Chloe sighs. “Just… a little lost. Max is out of town, work fell through this week, I’m kind of, uh, adrift at the moment.”

Things have been better between them, since Chloe left, but it’s still weird to find herself having an honest conversation with Joyce. Judging by the surprised look on her mother’s face, Chloe knows the feeling is mutual.

“Well,” Joyce starts, brow furrowed, “my shift doesn’t end for two more hours. Why don’t I give you the keys and you go home and take care of a few chores for me? If you can get that damn shower head to stop leaking you’ll have earned yourself a home cooked meal as payment.”

Chloe wastes another 20 minutes at the diner, chatting with Joyce when she’s not serving other customers. It’s nice, one of the most civil conversations she can remember having with Joyce in Arcadia Bay.

She decides to take the scenic route home and immediately regrets it. She’s done a lot of healing, since she left. A lot of moving on. But she doesn’t think she’ll ever get to the point where she can be in this town without memories flooding up to drown her.

David is at home, when she arrives. He’s surprised by her sudden appearance, but not hostile. Their relationship now is distant but weirdly cordial. Not comfortable enough for friendly, but still a far cry from the outright antagonism that defined their early years. Chloe doesn’t have the will or the energy to fight with him any longer. Nothing can change the fact that he was a shitty step-father, but she was never interested in developing that dynamic with him.

He’s a good husband to her mom, she can’t deny that, and that’s all he really has to be.

When Joyce gets home, Chloe’s already half way through making dinner, having long since finished what simple home repairs she set out to do for the evening. Joyce sags in the doorway looking tired and grateful and half-heartedly insists that Chloe let her take over. Chloe shoos her away with a kiss on the cheek and finishes cooking by herself.

Dinner is nice, only a little awkward, and when Joyce suggests Chloe stay with them for the night instead of driving back to Portland late, she agrees. David and Joyce are a little shocked by Chloe’s easy acquiescence, but honestly it was a no-brainer.

She feels stupid about it, but she can’t really stand the thought of spending another night alone in that apartment.

Of course, she didn’t really think through what it would mean to stay the night in her childhood bedroom instead. They’d painted the walls since she left, replaced some of the furniture in the room but everywhere she looked held memories just the same. The dresser her father had built still occupied its place in the corner, the snow doe Max had given her for Christmas when she was eleven perched proudly atop it.

She waits til 8:30, her time, to call Max, fairly sure her girlfriend will be back at the hotel by then. Max doesn’t answer, but she calls back less than thirty seconds later, a little out of breath.

“Sorry,” Max pants, “I was just getting out of the shower when I heard the phone and--”

“It’s fine, Max,” Chloe smiles, chest aching. She closes her eyes, leaning back on the bed and letting Max’s voice wash over her.

“What are you doing?” Max asks, sounding a little distracted.

“Not much,” Chloe admits. “Laying around. Just got done having dinner with Joyce--”

“Aw, she came up to visit?”

“No, I’m in Arcadia Bay.”

“Are you sick?” Max asks, alarmed.

“No,” Chloe chuckles. _God, why…?_ “Just… bored. Talk to me.”

“I am,” Max laughs.

“Well, do it more,” Chloe demands.

“About what?”

“Anything. Everything. I just… I wanna hear your voice,” Chloe says softly.

“Oh,” Max breathes into the receiver. “Well, I saw a raccoon today…”

Max heads into a tale that right away seems pretty made up, full of twists and turns and mystery. When Max loses the thread a few times, clearly making things up as she goes along, and it’s clumsy and awkward and so charming. Chloe listens intently, laughing genuinely at all the right parts, and when Max finally finishes, her heart feels so full of love and longing it kind of takes her breath away.

“I miss you so much,” Max tells her, before Chloe can say it herself.

“I miss you too,” Chloe says. “God. How many days?”

“Seven,” Max sighs.

A full week more of this.

“Oh,” Chloe says, feeling hollow with disappointment. “Well, that’s exciting for you, right? Another week of, y’know, cool art shit.”

“Exciting for me?” Max echoes, obviously dismayed. Chloe bites her lip, and throws her head back into the pillow feeling like an idiot. “Chloe, what do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” Chloe huffs, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Nothing, I’m sorry. It’s stupid, just--”

“No,” Max interrupts, softly. “C’mon. Nearly four years, Chloe, we’re past that shutting each other out shit. You trust me, right?”

“I just,” Chloe pauses, trying to figure out how to presents her jumble of thoughts and insecurities in a way that Max can understand. Logically, she _knows_ she’s probably just being a needy loser. Max loves her. Like, somehow actually _loves her,_ she doesn’t think so little of Max that she expects three days living her dream in the big city to change that. But what Chloe understands as the logical truth and what she feels as walking advertisement for lingering abandonment issues are two different things. “I just worry that… I’m glad you’re having this experience, Max, I _am_.”

“But…?”

“But I worry about what it means… like, for me.”

“What do you mean?” Max asks, patiently. Her voice is so soft.

“Like, what if you figure out that _this_ , y’know, this life we’ve got here, isn’t what you want anymore?” Chloe says in a rush. She writhes on the bed a little in distress, grateful that Max couldn’t see. Was it, like, manipulative to admit that? She never wanted Max to compromise her dreams, not for anything, especially not for _her_ but she didn’t want to _lie_ to Max and--

“Oh, Chloe,” Max sighs in a voice so tender, so sweet Chloe grits her teeth against the swell of emotion that blooms in her chest. “Chloe, that would never happen. You know I love our life together. I love _you_. So much.”

“I love you too,” Chloe sniffs and she can’t believe she’s fucking crying. Jesus Christ. “I just… Max, you’re so talented and ambitious and you have such a gift to share with the world and-and you deserve the world, you deserve to have everything you want, and I’d be kidding myself to believe that you could settle for some shitty Portland apartment forever.”

And some shitty, loser girlfriend who played with fire for a living and couldn’t even manage to secure a week’s worth of steady work without everything getting all fucked up.

“Chloe,” Max’s voice is stern now, enough to shock her out of her melancholy spiral and back into attention. “Listen to me.”

Chloe nods, foot thumping anxiously on the bed.

“You… You’re right, I mean, I want all of those things. I can’t lie about it,” Max admits. “Doing _this_. Doing photography for a living, it’s all I’ve wanted since I was a kid and now, for the first time, I’m starting to see what it would look like to have that. I’m starting to feel like that goal is attainable. I _want_ it, Chloe, I want it _so badly.”_

Chloe counts her breaths, trying to measure her breathing so Max can’t tell she’s crying again.

“But I need _you_ ,” Max continues. “I could be the most successful photographer in the world, I could be a legend, but it wouldn’t mean _shit_ if I didn’t have you, Chloe.”

“Oh,” Chloe says, eloquently.

Max barely notices, on a roll now, apparently. “You’re the _only thing_ I couldn’t live without. You’re so… you’re so good, and so smart, and you just… you make me better. You make me braver, and stronger and so, _so_ happy. And I know I want to make art for the rest of my life but I also know that I need to have you be a part of that life for it to mean anything at all.”

Max takes a shaky breath and then laughs and it’s so beautiful that Chloe feels her heart break and mend at the sound.

“Okay?” Max sniffs.

Chloe can’t decide if she feels less stupid now that she’s not crying alone or more stupid that she brought Max to tears over this. But she’s grateful, all the same.

“Okay,” Chloe says.

And then the tension disappears and they’re just Max and Chloe, on the phone like so many other times in this room, and she doesn’t feel 3000 miles away.

“Don’t hang up yet,” Max says through a yawn.

“It’s late,” Chloe protests half-heartedly, drumming her fingers against her belly.

“Late? It’s like 9:45.”

“Late for _you_ , dork,” Chloe rolls her eyes. “Don’t you have important hipster douchebag brunches to go to in the morning?”

“Yeah, but the whole sleepless artist look is very chic,” Max jokes. “This will just build my cred.”

Chloe laughs, heart buoyant in her chest.

“Hey, uh, check your email,” Max says, an edge of nervousness creeping into her voice. “I might have possibly done something.”

“Done what?” Chloe switches Max to speaker and pulls up the email app on her phone. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my _God_.”

“I know, I--”

“They finally got those giant gummy worms back in stock on that website you tried to block from my computer,” Chloe exclaims. “ _Yeah, I noticed_. Nice try, Max.”

“ _No_ , Chloe. Refresh it again.”

She does.

“Oh.”

“I-I probably should have asked you first,” Max says in a rush. “But I just-- I need to see you. And I think you need to see me too, so I ordered them while we were talking and--”

“Thank you,” Chloe whispers, reviewing her flight details. “Oh, god, nine am? I’m gonna have to get up at the ass crack of dawn, I’m already two hours out from Portland. I won’t have any time to pack.”

“What about your go-bag?” Max suggests.

“You mean my _zombie preparedness kit_?” Chloe corrects her, grinning uncontrollably. “I guess I could. I’d have to take out all the knives.”

“So you’re in?” Max asks, excitement brightening her tone.

“Of course,” Chloe laughs. “Of course.”

For Max, she always would be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [[SCREAMS INTO THE VOID]](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/)


End file.
